NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

alarm() arranges for a SIGALRM signal to be delivered to the calling
process in seconds seconds.
If seconds is zero, no new alarm() is scheduled.
In any event any previously set alarm() is canceled.

RETURNVALUE

alarm() returns the number of seconds remaining until any previously
scheduled alarm was due to be delivered, or zero if there was no
previously scheduled alarm.

CONFORMINGTO

SVr4, POSIX.1-2001, 4.3BSD

NOTES

alarm() and setitimer(2) share the same timer; calls to one will
interfere with use of the other.
sleep(3) may be implemented using SIGALRM; mixing calls to alarm() and
sleep(3) is a bad idea.
Scheduling delays can, as ever, cause the execution of the process to
be delayed by an arbitrary amount of time.